hardware upgrade

[joe98df]

I am considering upgrading my computer to improve the number of sounds playable through gigasampler. I have a Pentium II 450mHZ with 128MB SDRAM and 13GB Ultra ATA 5400PRM hard drive and a Echo Darla. I am only getting about 30 note polyphony. And with big samples like the Bosendorpher I can only play 3 or 4 notes simultaneously before the sounds breakup. I am considering adding another faster hard drive or replacing the CPU with a faster Pentium III. Which choice would give the best performance enhancement?

[NAZARU]

Joe,
If I were you I would check into tweaking my system first before spending any money. It seems to me that you should be getting much better performance than that with a PII 450. I had better performance than that when I was using a PII 350. There is probably something else causing your low polyphony other than your CPU. Peace.

[midirat1255]

Dude....

Your hard drive is WAY TO SLOW!

You need a faster drive. I have a 450 Mhz Pentium III using 7200 Maxtor drives with a Promise Technology ATA 100 (UDMA) PCI card from Maxtor. I also have 256 Megs ram. I have reached 140 voices without breakup (have never tried to max the polyphony yet!). Plus the previous post is also correct, you will need to tweak your system. Eliminate unnecessary driver files and TSRs in your system. Fonts and file extensions use up resources that are better used for you GS program.

I have 3 drives. One for system, one dedicated to GS voices, and one dedicated to recording audio.

Later.....

[midirat1255]

Dude....

Your hard drive is WAY TO SLOW!

You need a faster drive. I have a 450 Mhz Pentium III using 7200 Maxtor drives with a Promise Technology ATA 100 (UDMA) PCI card from Maxtor. I also have 256 Megs ram. I have reached 140 voices without breakup (have never tried to max the polyphony yet!). Plus the previous post is also correct, you will need to tweak your system. Eliminate unnecessary driver files and TSRs in your system. Fonts and file extensions use up resources that are better used for you GS program.

I have 3 drives. One for system, one dedicated to GS voices, and one dedicated to recording audio.

Later.....